Nowadays
there can be more truth in what fails to appear in the comics pages of the
Chicago Tribune than what does appear elsewhere in that paper
masquerading as news or sage editorial opinion.

Humor
just isn’t funny unless it reflects some semblance of truth, and for more
than four years Aaron McGruder has authored some of the funniest scathing
satire to ever to run in daily newspapers. On Wednesday, March 2, the
Chicago Tribune resumed running McGruder’s comic strip “The Boondocks”
after the associate managing editor for features/lifestyles, Geoff Brown,
decided to pull the previous Monday and Tuesday strips.

According to Don Wycliff, the Tribune’s public editor, Brown
circulated an in-house memo defending his decision. Wycliff stated, “Brown
said the problem was the same on both days: 'The Boondocks' creator Aaron
McGruder had characters stating as fact things that were not.”

In
Monday’s strip Caesar, Huey’s best friend, said, “Bush got recorded
admitting that he smoked weed.” Huey then suggests that, “Maybe he smoked
it to take the edge off the coke.” Tuesday’s
strip continued with a play on words showing the irony of Bush being
taped by a close friend whose last name happens to be Wead: Huey is
watching a television news broadcast: “Reportedly, a conversation in which
President Bush admitted to smoking marijuana was recorded by Doug Wead. . .
. This just in. We just got two more revelations from Joe Blow and Petey
Crack.”

On March
1,
Dave Astor reported in Editor and Publisher that most of the
e-mails to the Tribune accused it of censorship, and Brown’s response
was, “If we were censors, we’d cancel ‘The Boondocks’ and ‘Prickly City’ and
any other strips whose point of view clashed with some supposed ideology."
Brown went on to say, “We have no ideology on the comics pages.”

That
last statement, I might ad, cannot be said of the rest of the paper.

To
cancel the strip would have been too obvious when there is a more subtle
solution: Use semantics. And why not? It has been a very successful
strategy for the White House. So in his weekly column, Wycliff responded to
an email sent in by an astute reader by denying that Brown's decision to
pull the strip was censorship: "Let the record show that what Mr. McWilliams
calls censorship we at the newspaper call editing."

Brown is
correct with his assessment as stated in his in-house memo: “All reputable
news sources reporting [on] the tapes were careful to draw INFERENCES, but
no one can say Bush admitted to drug use.” That's a safe thing to say since
George Bush does not admit mistakes. Yet Bush hasn’t denied using drugs
either, and he won’t be given the opportunity any time soon by any of the
toadies from the press who have been granted limited access to the
president.

Brown's
decision to pull McGruder's comic was based on his assumption that in the
absence of an admission to any wrongdoing by Bush, it did not happen. Brown
told Editor and Publisher: "[W]hen they [cartoonists] inaccurately
attribute to a public figure a real-life fact, quote, or action that
never happened [emphasis mine], then lampoon him or her for a fictional
fact, quote, or action, that's unfair."

How
noble to give the president the benefit of the doubt while they both operate
under an obvious double standard. And to make matters worse, Wycliff stated
in his commentary, "Brown doesn't say it, but he might as well have: A
commentator is entitled to pick and choose his opinions, but he can't pick
and choose his facts." Since when? President Bush (granted, the president
is not a "commentator" -- he's not that literate) has been getting away with
picking and choosing his "facts" since the very beginning of his presidency.

The
Chicago Tribune endorsed George Bush for a second term as president in
spite of the FACT that Bush’s decision to illegally invade Iraq was based on
mere allegations that were proven to be false, resulting in thousands of
casualties and heaping misery upon millions. The irony now is that by
giving the president the benefit of the doubt, the Tribune is
continuing to be complicit with an administration that has repeatedly used
smear tactics for political gain, used shills like Jeff Gannon and dupes
like Judith Miller to sway public opinion, and has hired public relations
firms to produce right-wing propaganda in the form of faux-news videos.

After
Bush was re-elected, the question was asked on the cover of London’s
Daily Mirror: “How can 59,054, 087 people be so dumb?” Since much of
America's public opinion is derived from the corporate-sponsored press, the
answer is obvious. Meanwhile, the world burns while America’s hypocritical
fourth estate fiddles with its purse strings.

And it
is true, my friends, that the joke is on us. But somehow I just don't feel
like laughing.